The cooking of ham in hay imbues it with the most wonderful and unusual flavor, while insulating the meat from any fierce heat so that it cooks in the ideal gentle fashion, resulting in the most giving of flesh.  It also fills your home with rustic, pastoral smells.  To obtain your hay ask a friendly farmer if one is at hand, or just ask around–this can have surprising productive results.  If all else fails a reliable pet shop is a good source.

You will need a pot large enough to fit a leg of pork!

Oh my.  What a week.  As my father says, “I’ve had better ones.”  Last week at least ended on a high note, as my friends Seth and Laura (more Laura than Seth) gave birth to Cecilia Ann Williams, who weighed in at 7lbs 4oz.

Congrats you two, we know that she’ll grow up to be a fantastic person under your care.

I had invited Laura to come with me to a food bloggers potluck lunch here in Austin but Cecilia had different plans, so my wife and I ventured out alone.

When we showed up the party–graciously hosted by David Ansel, AKA The Soup Peddler–was in full swing.  People had brought a variety of dishes, every one of them perfectly constructed.

When I was first invited to the potluck, I wasn’t sure what to bring.  After some searching through “The Cookbook” I settled on making a ham boiled in hay.  A massive piece of pork, cooked in a totally unique manner?  Sold!

A week and a half before the party, I walked into the local Asian market and sauntered up to the meat counter.  Asking for a whole back leg of pig made the eyes of the butcher grow wide.

“The whole leg?”

“Yessir, the whole thing.  Oh, and ten pounds of pork belly too.”

Three minutes later I walked out of the store with a 20 pound leg of pork slung over my shoulder like Paul Bunyan carrying his axe.  I had brought a cooler full of ice to put it in, but the cooler was too small.  Uh  oh.

Once home, I immediately started making the brine needed for the recipe.  At this point the recipe has been etched into my brain, so I ran around the kitchen dumping the various components into my second largest pot without needing guidance.  Time was going to be a factor, as I didn’t have enough to brine the massive leg of pork as long as Mr. Henderson had asked for, so doubling the amount of salt and sugar and spice while keeping the same amount of water would in theory make up for the shorter dunking period.  In theory.

I have a five gallon paint bucket that is used for brining Thanksgiving turkeys.  It’s a huge beast, but it was bettered by the mammoth hogs’ leg.  The only possible way to make it fit was to cut the trotter off.  I was a bit sad being forced to cut into such a nice piece of meat, but the logistics left me with little choice.  I covered the bucket and eked it into my fridge.  All I had to do now was wait.

I present you with the strangest ingredient I have ever worked with, and that’s saying something folks.

They forgot to mention that it’s also fat free.  I ran to the pet store the day before the party and came back with more than enough hay.  You’ve gotta love this next picture.

SQUEE!  It’s a cute little bale of hay!  It’s so tiny!  I’ve actually been considering submitting this picture to Cute Overload, though they’d probably just laugh at me.  My puppy did make the site once though (he’s in the first video).

I cut the twine holding the bale together and began making a little nest in my biggest stock pot, adding some bay leaves, peppercorns, cloves and juniper berries as I went along.

DAMN.  My biggest stock pot just wasn’t big enough.  I stuffed as much hay as possible around the leg and trotter and added water until I filled the rest of the pot.  The water was brought up to a boil, then down to a simmer.

Since the leg was sticking above the edge of the pot, I did my best McGuyver impression and rigged together a lid of sorts.  The only thing left to do was wait for a few hours and make the suggested mashed rutabaga to accompany the ham.

For whatever reason, I totally forgot to take a picture of the massive ham once it was done cooking.  Thankfully Rachel and Logan over at Boots in the Oven have a nice shot of the beast halfway down the page here and a great recap of all the other dishes brought to the potluck.  After we got everything setup and settled, I made myself a plate to see how the dish ended up.  The first bite of ham was a bit disappointing.  The ham really needed the extra time soaking the brine, I could barely taste the familiar corning spices.  Even more disappointing was the lack of hay flavor.  The whole thing seemed like a wasted effort until newly relocated food blogger Michael from the very well known Cooking For Engineers mentioned that the flesh had a barley-like flavor to it.  I bolted back over to the ham and cut of a piece from a different area than I had earlier.  He was right!  This was the unusual flavor Mr. Henderson had mentioned, and it worked perfectly with the unctuous fatty pork.

A fantastic, although a bit bizarre dish.  The crazy thing is, I could see myself making it again though with a smaller amount of pork.  We’ve still got 10 pounds left over!

One down, seventy nine to go.

You will need a meat grinder.

A few weeks back I got an e-mail with the title, “Abroyles (Addie Broyles) referred me”.  It was from Jack Yang, the owner of eatinginabox.com, a food blog based around making bento box lunches with a theme.  It turns out that Jack and a friend of his had gotten a hold of some real haggis during a trip over the pond to London.  It had been a while since they had enjoyed the traditional Scottish dish, and Jack was looking for the needed ingredients to make their own haggis.

My response follows:

I’m more than happy to help out someone referred to me by Addie!

I have some good news, and some bad news. We’ll go with the bad news first.

I spent a long, long, really long time trying to find sheep stomach.  I ended up buying a 5 pound box of stomachs in Weatherford, TX.  I suppose that’s actually a good thing as I’d happily give you two or three or eight of them.

The actual bad news is that the other parts might be a bit tougher to scare up in a short period of time.  I usually head up to Dallas to my preferred lamb/sheep offal provider in Richardson TX, Zituna World Market. The problem is that I call my order in two or three weeks in advance. You can always try calling all of the halal meat markets in the local area to see what they have on hand. It’s possible that they might have everything you need, minus the lungs as they are illegal to sell in America due to Anthrax concerns.

Or if you could possibly wait a week, I need to make haggis myself, so we could make a joint venture of it. I happen to have all of the legal parts needed to make haggis, I even have some lamb brains I could throw into the mix to liven things up a bit.

Jack was game for a haggis making party, and the next weekend he showed up with potatoes and rutabagas in tow to make the necessary “neeps and taters” one would expect to find on a plate with ground up lamb innards, onions and toasted oatmeal that was boiled in a stomach.

True haggis calls for using the pluck, which should include the heart, the lights (aka the lungs), the windpipe, the liver and some of the intestines.  As I mentioned above, buying sheep or lamb lungs in America is illegal due to Anthrax concerns so sadly we had to do without.  Finding the windpipe was also not in the cards, so to make up for the lack of parts kidneys were added to the liver.

Before we got to cooking, I filled a big bowl full of water and started soaking the lamb stomachs.  This is done to help clean off any extra unwanted debris.

A lot of salted water was added to the innards pot, which we brought up to a boil and then back down to a simmer.  For two hours the bits needed to cook, so Jack and I talked about our cooking experiences, inspirations–Alton Brown brought Jack and his wife together–and the differences between tech bloggers like ourselves and PR bloggers.  It’s always good meeting new people, but it’s even better when you make a new friend.

For some reason I completely forgot that I also had lamb hearts, so we ended up boiling them separately in another pot full of salted water until they were properly cooked.

As the pots bubbled away, Jack made quick work of a few onions, chopping them perfectly as we talked.

Once everything had finished cooking, I got off my butt and got to work chopping the hearts, livers and kidneys into smaller chunks that we could feed through the grinding attachment on my Kitchenaid mixer.

Since I had never used the grinding attachment before, Jack took the reigns and began feeding the meat through.  Mr. Henderson specified that the guts should be coarsely ground, so coarsely ground they were.

The recipe also called for “prepared suet”.  After a small discussion we decided that grinding the suet would be best for mixing.  My poor little Kitchenaid mixer is a bit low on horsepower, so the tougher suet really strained its limits.  There was a bit of worry that the mixer wouldn’t make it through alive, but it huffed and it puffed and it managed to grind the suet and not turn into a smoking pile of rubble.

Jack jumped on the onions he had cut earlier and sauteed them until they were nice and soft.  At the same time I dropped two pans of pin head oatmeal into the oven to toast.  Once the oats started to emit a nice roasty scent, we knew it was time to combine everything together.

There was so much of every ingredient that we ended up using my large stock pot to mix the meat, toasted oats, onions and suet.  Vast quantities of allspice, salt and pepper were added.  Boiling things tends to deaden the flavor of food, so the extra spices were needed to counter that loss.

The stomachs had soaked for long enough, so it was time to start stuffing them.  We had to sort through the stomachs to find a few good ones as many of them had holes in the worst places.  Jack and I rolled our sleeves up and got to stuffing.  It was a messy job, but it had to be done.

Stuffing completed, we tied off two of the stomach pouches with butchers twine.  Jack was significantly better at tying than I was, and I wish I had let him tie off all of the stomachs.  Not done forgetting things, I had blanked on the fact I needed to use the extra lamb brains I had saved from the last time I made a brain recipe.  We mixed the brains into the remaining haggis mixture and stuffed another stomach.  This actually was perfect, we’d get to try haggis with and without brains to see which was superior.

The haggises (haggisi?) completed, we wrapped them all in foil…

… and dropped them into pots of boiling water.  The haggis trio needed about three hours of simmering so we lowered the heat a bit and wandered into the living room to watch a movie while we waited.  My friend Laura showed up for the festivities (she even drew a comic of the outcome).  She was the only person brave enough to come despite our various invites to other friends.  I wonder if they all really did have emergencies at the last minute, or the idea of actually eating haggis was just too much for them.  Either way, it was great having one more foodie point of view.

The three hours up, it was time to remove the haggises from their watery environments.  I only scalded myself a little bit pulling them out of the pots, but it was worth it.  As you can see there at the bottom of the haggis, the mixture did burst out a little bit, but the everything turned out just fine.

A quick two slices in the traditional method revealed the perfectly cooked meat and oatmeal.  We all started taking little pinches of haggis since were all so hungry. I knew we had succeeded when the only person that had eaten real haggis, Jack, declared that it was very similar.  As I’m trying my best to make these recipes as close to the book as possible, that’s the biggest complement I could receive.

Here’s a plate filled with haggis, neeps, taters and a dollop of Dijon mustard.  The haggis tasted to me like a livery, meaty oatmeal, and it worked perfectly with the root mashes.  Most interesting was the fact that if I added even a little bit of mustard to a spoonful of haggis, it would completely mask the liver flavor. If you get a chance to try haggis, make sure you have some Dijon mustard handy as well. The allspice was almost a non-factor despite the monumental amount we added.  The haggis made with brains didn’t turn out as well as I had hoped, and everyone agreed that the texture was off.  I think it was the extra moisture that the brains brought to the table was to blame.

Getting back to the original haggis, here’s Laura’s take:

And, sorry to say it, I found the filling incredibly reminiscent of canned dog food (I worked for 4 years at a dog kennel, so I have tasted my fair share of dog food). Now, it is a good-quality canned dog food, but dog food all the same. It had a rich meaty flavor, but a bit strong in the liver taste (not quite to my preference). But, when you eat it with just a dab of Dijon mustard, the liver taste was cut drastically and it was quite tasty. Plus, it was served with mashed rutabagas, which were incredibly delicious!

Jack has written up his own post on the event, which you can find here.  It was a real honor working with him, and we’ve already talked about getting together for more culinary adventures.  I can’t wait!

There was tons of work finding the ingredients and making the haggis,  and I’d be lying if I told you that I’d be game for doing it again anytime soon.

I’ll leave you with one of Scotland’s most famous sons, Robert Burns and his Address to A Haggis.

One down, eighty to go.

Address To A Haggis

Fair fa’ your honest, sonsie face,
Great chieftain o’ the puddin-race!
Aboon them a’ ye tak your place,
Painch, tripe, or thairm:
Weel are ye wordy o’ a grace
As lang’s my arm.

The groaning trencher there ye fill,
Your hurdies like a distant hill,
Your pin wad help to mend a mill
In time o’ need,
While thro’ your pores the dews distil
Like amber bead.

His knife see rustic Labour dight,
An’ cut you up wi’ ready sleight,
Trenching your gushing entrails bright,
Like ony ditch;
And then, O what a glorious sight,
Warm-reekin, rich!

Then, horn for horn,
they stretch an’ strive:
Deil tak the hindmost! on they drive,
Till a’ their weel-swall’d kytes belyve,
Are bent lyke drums;
Then auld Guidman, maist like to rive,
“Bethankit!” ‘hums.

Is there that owre his French ragout
Or olio that wad staw a sow,
Or fricassee wad mak her spew
Wi’ perfect sconner,
Looks down wi’ sneering, scornfu’ view
On sic a dinner?

Poor devil! see him ower his trash,
As feckless as a wither’d rash,
His spindle shank, a guid whip-lash,
His nieve a nit;
Thro’ bloody flood or field to dash,
O how unfit!

But mark the Rustic, haggis fed,
The trembling earth resounds his tread.
Clap in his walie nieve a blade,
He’ll mak it whissle;
An’ legs an’ arms, an’ heads will sned,
Like taps o’ thrissle.

Ye Pow’rs wha mak mankind your care,
And dish them out their bill o’ fare,
Auld Scotland wants nae skinking ware
That jaups in luggies;
But, if ye wish her gratefu’ prayer,
Gie her a haggis!

On behalf of all tripe, tripe is great and don’t hesitate to welcome it into your gastronomic life.

My goodness, what a week.  I’ve got two things on the back burner that I’ll be sharing shortly, but I’ve gotta admit that Carol fooled me big time with her recent post declaring her new job at Alinea.  I had forgotten some of her past tricks, but it was early in the morning when I saw her update, so it hadn’t registered in my brain yet that it was April 1st.  I was in the shower, day dreaming about Mr. Henderson giving me a call and asking me to work in one of his restaurants…

…then my wife reminded me of the date.

She got me good.  Carol, props to you.

I’m terribly tired so it’s pure luck that this week’s update is so very simple.  The gratin of tripe is just a continuation of last week’s update, tripe and onions, which is that much more of a good thing.

The day after I made the tripe and onions, some of the leftovers were poured into two oven proof containers.  Mr. Henderson mentions in “The Cookbook” that this is one of the few times that he recommends individual dishes, but this recipe works very well in this manner and that everyone loves their own gratin.

On top of the tripe and onion mixture I spread bread crumbs and added a LOT of butter.  Into a very hot oven the gratins went.

After about ten minutes the tripe liquor had bubbled over the top of the crust, which had turned into a lovely golden brown.  At this point Mr. Henderson suggests that eaters should probably stuff napkins down the fronts of their shirts to protect their fronts.  This really is necessary because unlike the tripe and onions served over potatoes, this has no starch to give it structure and stability.

Now the flavor was still uniquely tripe-like, which is to be expected.  It was still wonderfully comforting and soothing, but this version had the extra richness from the butter that was very, very nice.  If I had to do a Sophie’s choice between the two tripe recipes, I’d have to go with this one.  It’s simple, reminiscent of home cooking and it’s just good eating.

One down, eighty two to go.

Do not let the word tripe deter you, let its soothing charms win you over and enjoy it as do those who always have!  Visually, as well as gastronomically, there is a great serenity to a plate of tripe and onions.

Before I get into it, I’d like to mention that yes, I do have one ad up from Foodbuzz now.  Don’t get the wrong idea.  All of the proceeds I make will be going to the National Parkinson Foundation in Mr. Henderson’s name at the end of the year.

Now, tripe.  I’ve waxed poetic about tripe a few times before.  Way, way, way back when I first got “The Cookbook” I tried to make this recipe just to see if it was within my abilities.  Following the directions exactly, using the best possible ingredients, it ended up being terrible.  The taste, the texture, the whole mess was just inedible.  I got frustrated and moved on to other cookbooks.  The thing is though, I absolutely despise having an aversion to any food or drink.  I forced myself to learn to like cilantro and Campari.  So disliking tripe wasn’t really an option.  While I overcame my issue years ago, I haven’t revisited this dish until this week.

The recipe calls for honeycomb tripe but none was available from my sources.  What they did have was tripe that is used to make menudo, aka Rumen tripe. Rumen tripe comes from the first cow stomach, while honeycomb tripe comes from the second.  Fear not though, I got the full tripe experience as the only major difference is texture.  The taste of both kinds is very similar.

In a large enough pot I added roughly a quart of whole milk, a few roughly chopped onions and a massive pinch of mace.  The milk was brought to a gentle boil and then I turned the heat down to let things simmer for a little while.  In the meantime I cleaned the tripe about a dozen times under cool water to remove any “undesirable” elements.

Clean tripe?  Check.  Softened onions in milk?  Check.  Time to combine them.  I carefully decanted the tripe into the pot and added just a bit of salt and pepper.  A few good stirs to even out the mix and then I hit the heat again. Once I had hit boil again it was back down to simmer, which is where I left it for the next hour, stirring all the while to keep the bottom of the pot from burning.

Here you can see how some of the fat from the tripe has rendered off, enriching the liquor.  The frustrating thing was that the tripe itself was still pretty rubbery and completely unlike the amazing stuff I’ve had before at restaurants.  So on the cooking went for another hour and a half with me carefully checking every twenty minutes for tenderness.  There is a certain balance I was looking for: giving, but not falling apart.  My big fear was that the tripe would just melt away, which is a possibility. But before that could even remotely happen, I realized that the onions had vanished completely due to the extended cooking.  This is supposed to be tripe and onions, so I needed to add onions somehow.  A light bulb went off over my head.

I’d incorporate the onions into the next step!  Into a pan went a stick of butter and as it melted I quickly sliced another whole onion, adding it to the butter to sweat a little.  After a few minutes I dumped in enough flour to soak up all of the butter, making the beginning of a Soubise sauce.  The roux-like mixture was then used as a thickening agent for the tripe liquor, turning it into a gravy.

And here it is, tripe and onion with sauce plated on top of mashed potatoes.  It sort of looks like a blanquette de veau, doesn’t it?  Well, if you squint I suppose it does.

At the top of the page, Mr. Henderson requests that you let tripe’s “soothing charms win you over”.  The last time I made this dish, it was anything but soothing.  It was downright off putting to be kind.  But I can now say that it was due to my inexperience in cooking, not the recipe.  The first bite was in fact, incredibly soothing and comforting.  There was also something oddly familiar to it that I can’t place, and I’m still grappling with how to describe it now.  It just seemed… right.  My wife said that it reminded her of beef stroganoff, and I can see where she is coming from. The tripe itself was nice and tender–a little chewy in places–but you could cut it with a spoon.

Tripe is like blood when it comes to taste, nothing else really comes close.  Even Berti Bott Every Flavor Beans tried and didn’t quite succeed as far as I’m concerned.  But let me say this:  the tripe was so good, my wife had it the next day for breakfast.  We’ll be making this again for sure.

One down, eighty three to go.

Both this and the Boiled Beef and Dumplings recipe provide very good leftovers for your hash, or are excellent in sandwiches, or simply cold, thinly sliced, with Green Sauce or Horseradish Sauce.  You can salt the brisket yourself or 5 days in a brine or if you don’t want to make it yourself, you can buy corned brisket from the butcher.

Last Tuesday was St. Patrick’s Day so I wore green, spoke with an Irish brogue and made some corned beef for my friends.  Okay I lied a little:  I didn’t speak like an Irishman.  My wife would have knocked me silly after ten minutes.  I did however wear green and make corned beef.  Hopefully you and yours had a good holiday as well, and congratulations to Ireland for winning the Six Nations Rugby tournament.

As Mr. Henderson suggested, I brined my own four pound brisket for the allotted time, turning it over once to ensure that both sides were well soaked.  Having a brine bucket handy in the fridge is a great thing.  I’ve been dumping all sorts of random meat in there and just letting it sit for a few days.  Corned turkey is better than you might imagine!

In my roasting pan I made a bed of roughly chopped carrots, leeks, celery and onions.  The corned brisket was nestled on top of them along with a bouquet garni, a few whole heads of garlic and some peppercorns.

A bottle of red wine and enough chicken stock to make the brisket look like the tip of an iceberg was poured into the pan.  A layer of foil went on top and into a medium hot oven the whole thing went.

As the brisket roasted, we all sat around drinking Guinness, Bailey’s and Jameson Irish Whiskey while watching The Boondock Saints.  That’s about as Irish as we could get in the middle of Texas.  After a few hours the brisket was done and the kitchen smelled FANTASTIC.  I wish that I had let it cook a bit longer though, as the meat was a little tough.

Not helping the matter was that I made fairly thick brisket slices when I served it to my guests.  The flavor was there for sure.  As a matter of fact, I’d claim that this was the finest corned beef I’ve ever eaten.  Plated with a wedge of boiled cabbage and new potatoes, I’d like to think it made for a fairly decent dinner.  If I’d have had my wits about me I would have made soda bread as well.  Sigh.  We need more hours in the day!

One down, eighty four to go.